


Swing Shift

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Lives, Minor Leia Organa/Luke Skywalker/Han Solo, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27237655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: Finn’s in charge of the flimsi with the colour-coded schedule and all its cross-outs, hurriedly-scribbled shift changes and miscellaneous amendments.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Jacen Syndulla
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Swing Shift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambiguously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Night Shift](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16440758) by [ambiguously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously). 



> This is a remix of ambiguously's [Night Shift](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16440758). I've moved the timeline and adjusted the ship lineup but wholesale stolen the theme of practical polyamory. In some space militias, they don't say 'I love you' - they say 'I took up bullet journaling to make sure we'd get enough time together', and I think that's beautiful.
> 
> It's also a sequel to [Competing Stakeholder Priorities](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26869753/) and [Lay Down Your Arms](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27461512). Recip, please save this one for last!

Ben can't remember how old he was when he first figured out what his parents’ “close relationship” with Uncle Luke really meant. He must have been young. They never made much effort to hide it from him.

Looking back now, it seems crazy: a secret like that could have razed Leia’s political career to the ground if spilled by a resentful son. And Ben had been so resentful. His need for their attention was a gaping chasm inside him, and they lived such busy lives, always working, campaigning, jumping from planet to planet while he stayed home alone with a nanny droid and his imaginary friend Snoke. He needed every last scrap of love the three of them combined had to offer. Instead he received one quarter, tax deducted. They were scrupulously fair with their allocations, but fair means nothing when you’re six years old and your imaginary friend won’t stop whispering in your ear that no one wants you.

He blamed them all individually for his loneliness. Hated the time they spent doing grown-up things behind locked doors when they could have been reading him bedtime stories. Hated every second Mom and Dad spent hugging Uncle Luke instead of him when they visited home from the temple. In his teens he found their fondness for each other embarrassing, in much the same way Mom’s outdated Alderaanian braids and Dad’s Corellian junker were embarrassing. But it had never crossed his mind to blame the format of their relationship. That was just how life worked. Probably lots of people’s parents had marriages that de facto included an uncle or two.

Ben never knew it was a secret, let alone one worth spilling.

Maybe fate has a sense of humour. Since that day on Kef Bir, with the phantom pain of Rey’s killing blow still aching in his gut, he has known without a trace of doubt that her side is where he belongs. _A dyad in the Force_ sounded so reassuringly two-dimensional at first. But in reality, Rey’s side is a crowded place to be, and the unquestioned norms of Ben’s childhood have taken on a whole new relevance. The fact that his parents found as much time for him as they did seems impressive now he has firsthand experience of how hard multiaxial relationships are to balance.

Finn’s in charge of the flimsi with the colour-coded schedule and all its cross-outs, hurriedly-scribbled shift changes and miscellaneous amendments. After Ben, Finn’s the one who finds their arrangement most natural: Poe shared his childhood home with two apparently quite monogamous parents, and Rey shared hers with no one at all, but Finn was raised in a crowded barracks where everything from bunk assignments to bad clone-themed holoporn were treated as more or less communal assets. He has an eye for spotting overlapping meal breaks and a keen instinct for who might be feeling neglected amid the hustle and bustle of their lives. They’re all happy to do as he tells them, and not just because he’s the only one who knows how to read the staggeringly complex schedule.

It’s coming up on zero hundred hours and pitch dark outside, one of the right-feeling times on Ajan Kloss where the standard 24-hour clock has fallen in sync with the jungle moon’s 18-hour rotation cycle. Ben has just finished a swing shift in the command tent, running ground control on a handful of active missions while monitoring the general feeds for any sudden, problematic spikes in First Order activity. The remnants of his old regime are spattered everywhere like a burst cyst after Exegol. Cleaning them up feels more like sanitation work than warfare. Ben’s bored. Restless. Wants to use this rare window of alone time with Finn for something fun. Instead he’s sprawled on the bedroll in the tiny natural cave that doubles as Finn’s ready room and officer’s quarters, while Finn hunches at the desk scouring his flimsi for ways to carve the available supply of love into even smaller portions.

Because there's a newcomer now. An unneeded fifth cylinder on a perfectly functional quadjumper.

‘Jacen and I knew each other as kids,’ he tells Finn. ‘Our mothers were friends, and they were always trying to force us to be friends, too. He’s an asshole.’

‘That changes things,’ says Finn, not looking up. ‘Everyone knows about my zero-tolerance policy for assholes.’

‘He was supposed to join Luke’s temple, but he wouldn’t come. Too busy crashing speeders and burning fuel. He could never bear to stay in one place for long. He’ll probably be gone by the time you finish writing him into the schedule.’

‘You know, Ben, jealousy doesn’t suit you.’

‘I’m not jealous.’ What Ben is is realistic. Relationships, he's learned, follow the square-cube law: for every new side you add to the polygon, its volume increases much faster than its surface area. Time commitments clash more often. Fights are more likely to happen. Four is a solid, respectable number of people to be in love with each other at once. Five is too many. It’s impractical. Unwieldy. They’ll run out of space on the flimsi. ‘Doesn’t it bother you that Poe’s asked us to drop everything and rearrange our whole lives for the sake of a stranger who’s been here five minutes?’

‘All Poe’s asked me to do is figure out how to make room for Jacen on our next group date night. That’s not dropping everything. Anyway, didn’t you just say you’ve known him since childhood? He’s not a stranger.’

‘I _barely_ knew him. Just well enough to know he can’t be trusted.’

With a sigh, Finn sets down his stylus. Comes to the bedroll, lies next to Ben and props himself up on an elbow. ‘I think you know exactly how ridiculous you’re being,’ he says, softening the admonition with a warm hand on Ben’s hip. This is something else Finn’s good at: understanding Ben’s feelings when Ben can’t understand them himself, and neither dismissing them nor coddling the stupid ones. He has the people skills to have made a dangerously capable officer, if his First Order kidnappers had happened to put him in a different recruitment stream. He also has the compassion and goodness to have failed out of the role the first time he was asked to do anything evil, which would have been very soon after accepting it. ‘Poe and Jacen have history together. Just because you and I lived like monks before we met each other doesn’t mean no one else is allowed to have exes.’

‘I did not live like a–’ Ben bites off the lie in the face of Finn’s raised eyebrow. Now he has Finn’s attention, he regrets the line of argument that won it for him. He doesn’t want to talk about Poe’s exes when there are so many other things they could be doing.

‘It doesn’t bother me,’ Finn goes on, ‘because Poe wants to share another piece of his life with us. That’s the opposite of a threat to our relationship. Besides.’ He grins. ‘It could be interesting. Jacen’s hot.’

That part’s true. Jacen has grown into himself in the years between his and Ben’s last meeting, from an annoyingly hyperactive boy to a self-assured man with lean muscles and a roguish smile. He’s a lot like Poe, an ace pilot and a high octane personality. Another reason Ben worries he’ll upset the balance.

Because they’re perfect together as they are, him and Finn and Rey and Poe, each one of them a key piece of the fragile new life Ben has built for himself. At first it was just him and Rey, and his bond with her was a lifesaving anchor, heavy and unbreakable no matter how violently the seas churned around it. Then came Finn, who was warm and calm and didn’t need to weigh anyone down. Ben can share things with Finn that he doesn’t dare share with Rey for fear of feeding the latent darkness inside her. He would have been happy with just three – three was a nice, familiar-feeling number. But then there was Poe as well, and if Finn and Rey are stability then Poe is excitement: there’s that spark of competition between them, that adrenaline-fueled banter, that shared passion for flying fast and shooting things. Jacen’s reentry into Poe’s life threatens to fill a need Ben wanted to fill himself.

Maybe that’s the heart of the issue. Three was enough of a crowd that Leia, Han and Luke barely had time for their own kid. Four was only working thanks to Finn’s tireless efforts to synchronise their complex lives. If five proves one too many, being a senior member won’t necessarily save Ben from redundancy. For many reasons he’s the obvious choice to go. He needs different things from each of the others. But what do any of them need from him?

‘You’re making one of your faces,’ says Finn. Ben realises he’s doing exactly what he didn’t want to do and wasting his limited Finn time on Jacen. ‘What are you stewing about?’

Oh, well. If he’s going to ruminate on Poe’s love life then he can at least make it productive. ‘I was just thinking you might as well rebook group date night for Zhellday. We all have the evening off for that volunteer fundraiser.’

‘No we don’t. We’re the volunteers.’

‘What? Since when?’

‘It’s on the flimsi.’

Ben rarely consults the flimsi. He appreciates that Finn keeps it, and appreciates even more that Finn usually updates him in person so he doesn’t have to worry about decoding the administrative shorthand that Finn - never, after all, having served in an officer's role - seems to have reinvented completely by himself, with some creative twists. ‘I never volunteered.’

‘I know. I volunteered on your behalf, and now I’m voluntelling you to keep Zhellday free. No group date night. No nothing. It’s on the flimsi and I’m not changing it.’

‘But you’ll change it for Jacen and Poe.’

Finn rolls his eyes. He’s lying so close on the bedroll that Ben can feel the glow of his body heat, calling out to him just to sink in and forget about everything. He’s upset with himself now. Upset that once again his selfish instincts are rearing their head, driving him to beancount over who’s allowed to love whom and how much. He knows. Deep down Ben knows he’s being unreasonable, just like deep down he always knew his parents’ love wasn’t a finite resource no matter how much secret grown-up alone time they spent with Uncle Luke.

‘I tell you what,’ says Finn at last. ‘Play nice on Zhellday and we can leave an hour or so early for our date. Just one date, and if you don’t like it, you’ll never have to share a date night with Jacen again. We'll subdivide even more and I can schedule _two_ group date nights next time, one with you, one without. Because that'll be fun.' The look on his face says he's calculating something in his head. 'I think the timing works. All five of us can sneak away while Lieutenant Connix runs the raffle draw.'

‘What if one of us wins the raffle?’

‘I hope we don’t. A romantic spa day for two isn’t much use split between all of us.’ Finn grins, and it’s contagious. Doing what he should have done the moment Finn laid down beside him, Ben snuggles close. Finn rolls him onto his back and straddles him. Gazes down with eyes full of affection that looks in no immediate danger of being extinguished by the indifferent laws of maths. ‘Come on. Let’s see if I can distract that jealous head of yours.’

‘I’m not jealous,’ Ben tries to say again. But Finn is leaning in for a kiss, and the words can wait for later.


End file.
